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by Jeff and Jenn Eckert

UUV Built for Consumer Market

For years, the military, academia, and other institutions
have been deploying unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) for
various defense, inspection, and research applications, but
submersible bots have been far too expensive for the consumer
market. However, Aquabotix (
www.aquabotix.com) intends
to change all that with HydroView — "an affordable and easy-to-use underwater vehicle" that will allow you to play Jacques
Cousteau in your local body of water. Under the control of any
iOS device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop), you can satisfy your
curiosity about what lurks beneath the waves, inspect vessels
and structures, locate lost sunglasses and jewelry, or just annoy
sea creatures for the fun of it. (Use in public swimming pools is
discouraged, as it will probably get you thrown out.) HydroView
shoots full 1080p HD still and video images, and the onboard LEDs provide visibility in murky or low-light conditions. The
UUV is tethered to a floating topside box via a cable, allowing it to cruise around up to 5 kt forward and 1 kt reverse,
operating at depths up to 150 ft ( 46 m). The standard cable is 75 ft, but custom lengths are available. The battery pack
provides up to three hours of continuous exploration, and the 14. 6 x 19 x 7 inch ( 37 x 48 x 18 cm) comes with a
waterproof hard travel case. The bad news is that "affordable" is a relative term, since the HydroView Sport model will run
you $3,995. If that's not in your budget, you might consider the company's AquaLens product which offers similar viewing
and illumination features but mounts on the end of a pole instead of the sub. It's not nearly as much fun, but you can
grab one for only $475.

The HydroView UUV from Aquabotix.

AirBurr v.8 Revealed

In 2010, we took a look at AirBurr — a micro air vehicle (MAV)
under development at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de
Lausanne Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (
lis.epfl.ch). Its claim to
fame is that, rather than employing some kind of sophisticated
collision-avoidance system it just bounces off things and somehow
keeps moving (much like my
college buddies during a night on
the town). Now, after two more
years of evolvement, the Lab has
added capability of righting itself and continuing on its journey even after crashing all
the way to the ground (unlike the aforementioned buddies). It accomplishes this by
virtue of a low center of gravity coupled with a spherical carbon fiber cage, plus four
legs that extend from the body and push it into a vertical position. According to a
paper published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, the new Samurai model — which is
the eighth generation of the device — can right itself within 25 seconds, 100 percent
of the time. Well, assuming that it crashes onto a surface that slopes less than 10
degrees, that is, and doesn't include rocks or gravel, of course. AirBurr v. 9 is already in
the works, so maybe in a couple more years, those little constraints will have been
eliminated.

The AirBurr, designed to navigate through cluttered
indoor environments.